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Cris Mazza (born 1956) is an American novelist, short story and non-fiction writer. A native of Southern California, she earned her BA and MA at San Diego State University and her MFA in writing at Brooklyn College. She has published nine novels, four collections of short stories, and a collection of essays. She is widely anthologized as an example of post-feminist, formalist or contemporary experimental fiction. Her work often deals with second and third-wave feminist concerns as well as frank sexuality.

Along with Jeffrey DeShell, she coined the term "chick lit" for the edited anthology Chick Lit Postfeminist Fiction (1995) and the follow up anthology Chick Lit 2: No Chick Vics (1996) What is chick-lit?. While originally meant to be ironic, the term was co-opted to define a very different sort of work.

Mazza directs the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago[1].

She won the PEN / Nelson Algren Award for her novel "How to Leave a Country." Soft Skull: Waterbaby by Cris Mazza

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Cris Mazza", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0